Monday, May 13, 2024

J. B. Mozley (1847) on the Problems of appealing to "good and necessary consequence" of the Bible and/or Logic

  

When the inferential process enters upon a ground where there is not this good understanding or when it slides out of its own, simply inferential functions into conjectural ones and attempts discovery, it loses this command; and the appeal to simple logic to force unaccepted premisses, or subtle conjectures will not answer. On this latter sort of ground, one man’s logic will differ from another man’s logic; and one will draw one inference and another; and one will draw more and another less in the same direction of inference. In this way the logical controversy proceeded on the great doctrines of Christianity in the first centuries: different sects developed them in their own way; and each sect appealed triumphantly to the logical irresitibleness of its development. The Arian, the Nestorian, the Apolliniarian, the Eutychian, the Monothelite developments, each began with a great truth and each professed to demand one, and only one, treatment for it. All successively had one watchword, and that was, Be logical. Be logical, said the Arian: Jesus Christ is the son of God; a son cannot be coeval with his father. Be logical, said the Nestorian: Jesus Christ was man and was God; he was therefore two persons. Be logical, said the Apollinarian: Jesus Christ was not two persons; he was not, therefore, perfect God and perfect man too. Be logical, said the Eutychian: Jesus Christ was only one person; he could therefore only have one nature. Be logical, said the Monothelite: Jesus Christ was only one person; he could therefore only have one will. Be logical, said the Macedonian: The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father, and therefore cannot be a person distinct from the Father. Be logical, said the Sabellian: God is one, and therefore cannot be three. BE logical, said the Manichean: evil is not derived from God, and therefore must be an original substance independent of Him. Be logical, aid the Gnostic: an infinite Deity cannot really assume a finite body. Be logical, said the Novatian: there is only one baptism for the remission of sins; there is therefore no remission for sin after baptism. Be logical, to come to later times, said the Calvinist: God predestines, and therefore man has not free will. BE logical, said the Anabaptist: the Gospel bids us to communicate our goods, and therefore does not sanction property in them. Be logical, says the Quaker: the Gospel enjoins meekness, and therefore forbids war. Be logical, says every sect and school: you admit our premisses; you do not admit our conclusions. You are inconsistent. You go a certain way, and then arbitrarily stop. You admit a truth, but do not push it to its legitimate consequences. You are superficial; you want depth. Thus on every kind of question in religion has human logic from the first imposed imperially its own conclusions; and encountered equally imperial counter ones. The truth is, that human reason is liable to error; and to make logical infallible we must have an infallible logician. . . .The whole dogmatic creed of the Church has been formed in direct contradiction to such apparent lines of consecutiveness. (J. B. Mozley, The Theory of Development: A Criticism of Dr. Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine [1847], 42-43)

 

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